tellect and sound sense. We want our farmers to be working-men,
not day-laborers. We want them to be practical farmers, book-farmers,
and gentlemen-farmers in one. The proprietors of the soil stand at the
base of society, and should constitute by themselves an order of
nobility,--but eclectic, not hereditary. Whenever a boy displays a turn
for agriculture, there is a fit subject for agricultural education, a
proper student for an agricultural college, whether his father were
merchant, farmer, policeman, or president. You cannot make a college so
mean that farmers' sons will flock into it, but you can make it so great
that the best of all classes shall press in. Endosmose and exosmose are
the soul of growth; either, alone, would bring death,--death on one side
from exhaustion, on the other from over-fulness. The city is currently
said to draw its best blood from the country. Let the city pour it
back again over field and meadow, turning our wildernesses into
gardens. Country and city will be invigorated by an exchange of
commodities,--the one giving of its nature, the other of its culture.
We want no exclusiveness, aristocratic or democratic. We want
intelligent men to develop the capacity of the soil. The problem is, to
vindicate the ways of God to man,--to demonstrate that He spake truth,
when He looked upon the earth which He had made, and pronounced it very
good. It is the duty of this generation to show to the future that
agriculture opens a career, and not a grave, to thought, energy, and
genius. It needs strong arms and stout hearts, but there are bays to be
won and worn. We want farmers who do not look upon their land as a
malicious menial, but who love it and woo it, and delight in enriching
and adorning it. We want men who are enthusiastic,--who will not be put
down by failures, nor disheartened by delay,--men who believe that the
Earth holds in her lap richer stores than gold or silver,--who are not
deceived by all the grovelling that has been laid to her charge, but
know in their inmost souls that she is full of beneficence and power,
and that it needs only to pronounce the "Open Sesame!" to gain
admittance to her treasure-house and possession of her richest gifts. We
want men who are willing to spend and be spent, not for paltry gains or
sordid existence, but for gains that are not paltry and existence that
is not sordid,--for love of truth,--men who attribute the failure of
their experiments, not to the pover